Archery Exercises to Increase Draw Weight | Tips from 60X

Archery is, by nature, a sport of progress. Every archer worth their salt wants to see their aim, accuracy, steadiness, and draw weight capability improve over time. Your draw can be a challenge to increase, but with a few tried and proven exercises, you can push up the poundage substantially without loss of accuracy or extra threat of an injury like  Archer’s Elbow. If you want to learn how to strengthen your archery muscles, try one of these exercises.

1 – Frequent Shooting

It sounds obvious, but one of the best archery exercises to increase draw weight is to shoot frequently at short distances. If your stance and technique are on form, the extra shooting will work your archery muscles in unison. Keep your target close so you can shoot more frequently and remember the point is the draw and release, so don’t get sloppy on your form once the fatigue starts to kick in. This is when your muscles get the most exercise.

Be careful not to let the frequency of close shooting let you slip into developing bad form habits because due to the repetition, those bad habits will become hard to break. Also, use caution with the draw weight you’re using. For this method, use a weight where you’re already comfortable. Just like when you’re working out at the gym, you can hurt yourself by increasing too fast. Whether you’re using a  compound bow, crossbow, a longbow or a recurve, we recommend a reliable bow string from one of our top brands.

2 - Pull-ups

Pull-ups are an old and trusted archery exercise to increase draw weight that works the biggest archery muscles in your upper body. You can pick up a decent pull-up bar almost anywhere these days and pop it in an unused doorway. When you perform the pull-up, use only your upper body strength — no cheating! Feel out what a max set of reps is for you and try to increase your set amount every few days. Remember, if the muscles ain’t burning, the pull-up ain’t working. Try doing your max set at two to three different points in your day. Once you’re killing the traditional pull-up, try the wide-arm variant to really push yourself.

3 - Push-ups

These are another simple but effective answer to the question of how to strengthen archery muscles. Push-ups can be done anywhere and come in different variants to focus on different specific muscle groups. Try a standard set first, and then move to the triangle push-up, the wide-arm push-up, the raised push-up, and the decline push-up. If you’re really feeling ambitious, try the one-arm variation.

Push-ups focus muscle groups you use throughout the entire draw and release process of firing your bow. If done consistently, they will give you a serious boost in draw weight capability in a relatively short period of time. Just like with pull-ups, try to do multiple sessions spread throughout the day, increasing your number of sets every few days.

Start Practicing Today!

Sound really simple? That’s because it is. There are a plethora of other archery exercises to increase draw weight that will undoubtedly help you out, but these three are proven winners you likely know how to do correctly and are relatively easy to execute and improve on. Always remember to listen to your body, though. If it feels like you may be pushing it too far, dial it back a bit. An injured muscle could bench your shooting for weeks and result in losing some of your progress.

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